as someone who works in tech, the number of people who think they know about tech and are actually completely full of shit dramatically outweighs the people who don’t work in tech and do know what they’re talking about. it can take a lot of energy to differentiate the 2 groups
dunning krueger is at play a lot, because most people use a computer every day and think they know everything about the internet because they know what DNS stands for and typed a command to flush the DNS cache this one time and it worked
This mirrors the experience of anyone who has studied linguistics.
Because everyone speaks at least one language fluently, they tend to assume that they understand how languages work, while having zero awareness of the fact that people have spent generations studying language and communication at the PhD level and that almost nothing about what we reflexively intuit about language actually holds true.
And I say this as a purely amateur linguistics nerd who does not claim any real formal expertise in terms of academic credentials.
Don’t exhaust yourself, just assume that everyone who thinks they know about tech does. They’ll prove themselves wrong very quickly if necessary and you eliminate the risk of getting owned by a VS model.
except when you waste a crap load of time figuring something out only to realise that the person that says “it can’t be X” didn’t actually know that it was in fact X
… this is why you don’t argue with ISP support when they tell you to reboot your router: just do it; they don’t know that you’ve done that before you call them, and you telling them that’s not the problem is not going to change anything… it’s not because they don’t believe you specifically, it’s because they just can’t trust that everyone knows what they’re talking about
the same goes for most IT problems… it saves time in the long run to just assume people don’t know what they’re doing, because problems and systems are both complex and dynamic
that kind of reboot doesn’t do everything… turning the power off for 30sec completely discharges the capacitors in the power supply, as well as leaving time for things in the exchange to time out and reset
it’s a quick way of solving a mountain of issues, both client side and ISP side
some ISPs do have a script, some have better support than that but rebooting is a good strategy for a huge number of things because IT systems are just so complex
Yeah, you can’t really fake experience either. I recently joined a group of guys who clearly have had plenty of real world experience in the kinds of things I have, and just talking shop is refreshing. Haven’t had that ability for a long time.
If someone like her showed up in my team, and she’s able to talk the talk, I wouldn’t need any further validation and it’d be fun to hear the kinds of things she’s worked on.
Funnily enough, a woman is joining this all-guy group soon and I’m told she’s really good, so I get to do exactly that.
This is true, but also IT is a huge place there is an insane amount to learn. So really you spend an incredible amount of time in the “valley of despair”. Basically anyone who brags about their skills is VERY suspect. This person is an iOS developer, which is a great career, but the title of the article is phrased like she was at least Linus Torvalds. I’m sure she had little say in this, but whilst a reaction like this is never justified I can see why people made fun of it. Also it was clearly written by someone who has no idea what the words mean. Unless I’m mistaken MIPS is a cpu architecture, you can’t program in it. You can write machine code “for” it. So yeah I can see why people assumend these claims were lies.
They assumed these claims were lies because they are sexist.
I work in tech. I taught programming at university. And guys think I have no idea what I am talking about when I am the person correcting their f*ing babies homework. I had men come into my office asking me when the Sys Admin is back in office.
as someone who works in tech, the number of people who think they know about tech and are actually completely full of shit dramatically outweighs the people who don’t work in tech and do know what they’re talking about. it can take a lot of energy to differentiate the 2 groups
dunning krueger is at play a lot, because most people use a computer every day and think they know everything about the internet because they know what DNS stands for and typed a command to flush the DNS cache this one time and it worked
This mirrors the experience of anyone who has studied linguistics.
Because everyone speaks at least one language fluently, they tend to assume that they understand how languages work, while having zero awareness of the fact that people have spent generations studying language and communication at the PhD level and that almost nothing about what we reflexively intuit about language actually holds true.
And I say this as a purely amateur linguistics nerd who does not claim any real formal expertise in terms of academic credentials.
Don’t exhaust yourself, just assume that everyone who thinks they know about tech does. They’ll prove themselves wrong very quickly if necessary and you eliminate the risk of getting owned by a VS model.
except when you waste a crap load of time figuring something out only to realise that the person that says “it can’t be X” didn’t actually know that it was in fact X
… this is why you don’t argue with ISP support when they tell you to reboot your router: just do it; they don’t know that you’ve done that before you call them, and you telling them that’s not the problem is not going to change anything… it’s not because they don’t believe you specifically, it’s because they just can’t trust that everyone knows what they’re talking about
the same goes for most IT problems… it saves time in the long run to just assume people don’t know what they’re doing, because problems and systems are both complex and dynamic
Nah, ISP support (and many other support) just have a script they have to go through on every call.
I agree that rebooting your electronic device will fix a lot of issues.
But if those from support were actually any good, they would just reboot your router remotely.
that kind of reboot doesn’t do everything… turning the power off for 30sec completely discharges the capacitors in the power supply, as well as leaving time for things in the exchange to time out and reset
it’s a quick way of solving a mountain of issues, both client side and ISP side
some ISPs do have a script, some have better support than that but rebooting is a good strategy for a huge number of things because IT systems are just so complex
Yeah, you can’t really fake experience either. I recently joined a group of guys who clearly have had plenty of real world experience in the kinds of things I have, and just talking shop is refreshing. Haven’t had that ability for a long time.
If someone like her showed up in my team, and she’s able to talk the talk, I wouldn’t need any further validation and it’d be fun to hear the kinds of things she’s worked on.
Funnily enough, a woman is joining this all-guy group soon and I’m told she’s really good, so I get to do exactly that.
I feel personally attacked lol
This is true, but also IT is a huge place there is an insane amount to learn. So really you spend an incredible amount of time in the “valley of despair”. Basically anyone who brags about their skills is VERY suspect. This person is an iOS developer, which is a great career, but the title of the article is phrased like she was at least Linus Torvalds. I’m sure she had little say in this, but whilst a reaction like this is never justified I can see why people made fun of it. Also it was clearly written by someone who has no idea what the words mean. Unless I’m mistaken MIPS is a cpu architecture, you can’t program in it. You can write machine code “for” it. So yeah I can see why people assumend these claims were lies.
They assumed these claims were lies because they are sexist.
I work in tech. I taught programming at university. And guys think I have no idea what I am talking about when I am the person correcting their f*ing babies homework. I had men come into my office asking me when the Sys Admin is back in office.